Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held a guest lecture at the Ludovika University of Public Service campus on Wednesday, 25 September in Budapest. The two main topics of his speech were European competitiveness and Hungarian economic neutrality, on the occasion of Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the EU.

PM Orbán started by stating that it is a very special occasion, as it can only occur ‘every ten years or so,’ when Hungary is occupying the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.

As he reminded all, the Hungarian presidency kicked off with a ‘peace mission,’ trying to get the belligerent sides of the Russo-Ukrainian war to come to the negotiating table. However, the recent flooding of rivers across Europe has drawn attention away from that and other diplomatic matters, something he would refocus on in his speech, the PM said.

‘A Competitivity Pact is posed to be signed by EU leaders in Budapest, Hungary in early November’

‘Hungary has taken over the rotating presidency of the EU Council in uniquely hard times,’ he went on to state. The Prime Minister stressed that competitiveness has been at the centre of the agenda of the Hungarian EU presidency, as Minister for EU Affairs János Bóka and his team of experts identified the decrease in competitiveness as the number one issue for the European Union today. He revealed that there is a ‘Competitivity Pact’ posed to be signed by EU leaders in Budapest, Hungary in early November.

PM Orbán lamented the fact that internal communication within the EU tends to shy away from talking about negative trends and problems, a phenomenon he likened to the old French Royal Courts. ‘Whoever talks in the nicest way about our common values and unity goes to the front of the line,’ he said.

However, the recently released report by former President of the European Central Bank and former Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi has found that the economic growth of the EU bloc has been ‘constantly lower’ than that of the United States in the past two decades; and that the forfeiture of cheap Russian gas imports in 2022 has cost the EU the total loss of its annual GDP growth. The report has also found the EU’s share of global commerce is decreasing, among other damning facts about the current state of the European economy.

‘It is clear that the momentum is in Asia’

The Prime Minister pointed out that many of the suggested solutions to the problems in the Draghi report match those of the Hungarian government, without mentioning any specifics.

‘It is clear that the momentum is in Asia. That’s where most of the money is, that’s where the biggest banks, biggest investment funds, the biggest corporations, and the biggest research centres are,’ he commented on the recent shift of balance in the global economy. He criticized the Brussels and Washington leadership for trying to reverse these developments by forming economic blocs again, akin to the time of the Cold War in the 20th century. In response, Asian countries are working to create a non-dollar-based economic accounting system, which PM Orbán believes they will be able to achieve eventually. ‘If that happens, we will have to operate in two separate financial systems,’ he warned.

Some in the European leadership are aiming to position the EU on the American half of the new bipolar economic world order, according to Orbán. Others, such as President Macron of France, are advocating for ‘European strategic autonomy’; which the Prime Minister defined as a strategy where ‘Europe is moulding its relations to all other actors on the world economic stage based on its own interest’. Prime Minister Orbán stressed that he thinks the latter approach is favourable to Hungarians. ‘Too bad that that won’t work either,’ he added facetiously.

‘Federalist Europe is a daydream that will suffer a serious shipwreck’

The Prime Minister believes that the best course of action is strategic autonomy based on national interest, not on federalist interest, as the proponents of this strategy in Europe have suggested so far. ‘I believe federalist Europe is a daydream that will suffer a serious shipwreck,’ he added.

On the other major topic of the lecture, Hungarian economic neutrality, Prime Minister Orbán had this to say:

‘Hungary has been implementing an ideology-free economic policy for years…While the whole of Europe was trying to approach the problem of migration through an ideological lens, Hungary did not do so, but looked at the issue as it was, and said “We don’t want this.”…The essence of economic neutrality is that if the global economy is divided into two, there still will be areas, let’s call them “overlap areas,” where the two economic systems meet. It was the case even in the wildest times of the Cold War, just think of Vienna. What economic neutrality means for Hungary is that we happened to be located in a place just like that’.

Prime Minister Orbán concluded by saying that the most important thesis of economic neutrality is that Hungary decides who it does business with; and stressed that modernization is not only happening in the West anymore.

You can watch PM Orbán’s lecture at Ludovika University in its entirety below.

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